Steve Case during his Rise of the Rest tour stop in Nashville
When Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, announced in August that he was coming to Portland on Oct. 2 as part of his Rise of the Rest tour and wouldn’t leave without investing $100,000 in a local startup, the big question was who will get the chance to pitch the famous entrepreneur?
Well, the wait is over.
Revolution LLC, Case’s D.C.-based venture capital firm, announced on Tuesday the eight startups chosen to pitch Case and a panel of judges, which will include former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. They are:
• Likeable Local, a software company with offices in Portland and New York City that develops social media platforms for small businesses.
• Dream Local Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Rockland.
• Rapport, a Portland-based company developing software to allow small- and medium-sized businesses track and measure their sustainability. Rapport in June won the Top Gun Showcase event held by the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development, which came with a $10,000 prize.
• CourseStorm, which is based in Orono and develops course-registration software for education organizations. CourseStorm was recently accepted into the University of Maine’s Scratchpad Accelerator program.
• Spring Point Solutions, a Portland-based company developing software for motor repair shops.
• iKNO Intranet, which is based in Portland and is developing software to allow companies to improve internal and customer engagement.
• Introspective Systems, a Portland-based software company targeting any industry struggling with big-data challenges.
• Lobster Unlimited, a company out of the University of Maine that aims to develop products from lobster-processing industry waste, such as shells.
Startups had to apply to the pitch competition. There was no immediate word on how many applications the Revolution team received.
This is the fourth leg of Case’s Rise of the Rest bus tour, an initiative he began in 2014 to highlight cities with burgeoning startup scenes. According to a video on Case’s website, he initiated the tour after realizing that 75 percent of the venture capital in the U.S. goes to three coastal cities. To date, he’s visited 14 cities and invested $1.5 million in the startups he’s met along the way.
Portland will be the final stop on this leg of the Rise of the Rest tour. Case will begin in Baltimore on Sept. 28, before traveling to Philadelphia on Sept. 29, Buffalo on Sept. 30, and Manchester on Oct. 1.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
